Seven-year-old boy lobs pretend grenade during recess, gets suspended

On Tuesday, school district officials asserted that a suspension doesn’t occur until a student violates Mary Blair Elementary’s list of “absolutes” three times.

Watkins said she was never contacted about any previous instances when Evans violated the “absolutes.”

Then, on Wednesday, Watkins met with Principal Lara-Black and another school official. Watkins told the Reporter-Herald that Lara-Black told an entirely different story at that meeting. The new claim was that several witnesses saw Evans chucking rocks on the playground. However, school officials could provide no documentation of these charges, according to Watkins.

Watkins then asked her son if he had thrown rocks. He reiterated that all he ever did was try to save planet earth with an imaginary grenade.

“My son’s story has not changed even once,” Watkins told the Reporter-Herald. “Honestly, my son has been the most consistent person in this situation.”

This incident is the latest in an increasingly long line of extraordinarily strong reactions by school officials to things students have brought to school — or talked about bringing to school, or, in this case, imagined while at school — that are not anything like real weapons.

At Poston Butte High School on the suburban fringes of Phoenix, a high school freshman was suspended for setting a picture of an AK-47 as the desktop background on his school-issued computer.

At Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School in Maryland, a six-year-old boy was suspended for making the universal kid sign for a gun, pointing at another student and saying “pow.” That boy’s suspension was later lifted and his name cleared.

In Sumter, South Carolina, a six-year-old girl was expelled for bringing a clear plastic Airsoft gun that shoots plastic pellet to class for show-and-tell. The expulsion was later revoked.